END OF THE ROAD: Four Somalis stripped of US citizenship over ‘fictitious family deal’

By T. Roble

The US Justice Department has stripped four Somalis of the citizenship by naturalization after a district court established the defendants fraudulently acquired US citizenship through willful misrepresentation.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota found that the last defendant, Fowsia Abdi Adan ‘fictitiously created a family to secure a Diversity Immigrant Visa’ in 2016 in which case she presented the three co-accused as family members.

“During litigation, Adan, 51, conceded that she had procured her U.S. citizenship by willful misrepresentation and concealment of material facts, including the fraudulent nature of her relationship to individuals she claimed to be her children,” the Justice Department said a statement on its website Tuesday.

“In light of that admission, the court found that Adan had unlawfully procured her U.S. citizenship.”

The US court also entered orders revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of Adan’s purported husband, Ahmed Mohamed Warsame aka Jama Solob Kayre, 53, on February 27, 2018, and her purported sons, Mustaf Abdi Adan aka Mohamed Jama Solob, 33, and Faysal Jama Mire aka Mobarak Jama Solob, 31, on March 19, 2018. All four individuals consented to the entry of orders of denaturalization.

Ahmed Warsame, the court found sought to procure and procured a DV2 immigrant visa by willfully mispresenting on his visa application his identity, his use of other names, his marriage and the identity of his spouse, and the identity of his children.

According to the diversity programme, a spouse of a diversity visa immigrant can be granted a DV2 Immigrant visa having satisfactorily met the requisite standards.

FAKE MARRIAGE

But the US court established that Warsame falsely listed Adan as his spouse and stated she would accompany him to the United States. He also presented a marriage certificate issued by the Somali Democratic Republic indicating that he and Adan were married on September 26, 1983. Warsame also told immigration officials he had three children with Adan born between 1984 and 1989.

Warsame got the attention of US authorities in 2006 when he sought to bring his real children and wife from Yemen upon which he claimed the three children were his step-children from a purported previous marriage. But DNA results from a 2010 test by fraud investigators found that Warsame was indeed the biological father of three children. This was after he got a sham divorce from Fosia Adan in 2002.

The four have now been ordered to surrender their citizenship documents following annulment by the court.